It’s been quite the year, it’s almost Christmas and what would the festive season be without some recognition of the best of 2024? Over the next month we’ll shortlist five nominees in each of 17 categories for our 10th annual Oscars, or monstas if you will, of 2024.
You, dear reader, are given the chance to vote in 17 categories from October this year to tell us your favourite theatre, music, TV, film and podcast of 2024.
By Aline Mahrud
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
WHEN?: Saturday 29 June 2024, running through 21 September 2024 RUNTIME: 120 minutes (no interval)
The Role Play That Goes Wrong might have been a more illuminating title for this new tale about 3 inter-racial couples seeking help.
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
Author Alice Oseman’s web comic Heartstopper may have seemed unlikely source material for 2022’s best show of the year so far but below are 6 reasons with clips about why you should catch it on Netflix now.
It’s not easy being a band with a 40-year history that wants to write new material when the fans are familiar with hits as glorious as Digging Your Scene, It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way and Wait. The trick is to write material as memorable as the songs that broke you and the Blow Monkeys played a blinder with Time Storm, a song of the week for us last year. The follow-up More Than A Miracle out 16/4/21 is in a similar vein, doesn’t disappoint and sits well with the best of the band’s back catalogue. Album Journey To You follows in September. Tickets are on sale for UK dates in October including a London gig at 229. Read our interview with Dr Robert on this site in April.
WORTH A LOOK?: **1/2
WHERE? Dorfman Theatre, National RUNTIME: 110 minutes without interval
WHEN? 26/10 (matinee), press night 30/10, runs to 23/11/19
We’re at this preview of Annie Baker’s new play set in what appears to be a present-day US writers’ room because it has a mouthwatering ensemble cast.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHERE? Almeida Theatre
WHEN? 15/3 runs to 30/3/19 RUNTIME: 3 hours (including a 20-minute interval)
Can political plays ever be about now? Was Shakespeare liberated by the censorship which dominated his writing or did its influence transform the Bard’s work into something truly universal?
WORTH A LOOK?: **
WHERE: Donmar
WHEN: 30/3, press night 3/4, runs to 26/5/18
We’re here for the casting of Linda Bassett, reviewed on this site in Escaped Alone at the Royal Court, as matriarch Lady Wishfort but she is replaced before previews begin.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE: Dorfman Theatre, National
WHEN: 3/6, press night 7/6 runs to 18/7
STOP PRESS: Barber Shop Chronicles runs at the Camden Roundhouse in summer 2019. Tickets
Barber Shop Chronicles is an ambitious and fun 105-minute play without interval set in barber shops in London, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
This year will be our fourth Glastonbury in a row and, although there’s far too much to be excited about to list here, we’d probably pick our first Emeli Sandé gig as the thing we’re most enthused by at the sold-out event which runs from 22/6 to 25/6. Katy Perry’s new album Witness is out 9/6 and Lorde’s Melodrama 16/6 and they both also feature.
